Drones are used in agriculture to optimize production and as sentinels. An employee discovers a connection between his job assisting in suicides and his employers’ ownership of the drone manufacturing.

Hover, directed by Matt Osterman and written/starring Cleopatra Coleman, follows John ( Craig muMs Grant ) and Claudia ( Cleopatra Coleman ), two representatives of a controversial assisted suicide agency operating in a dystopian world suffering from massive income inequality and famine. What is left of the world’s agriculture is monitored and tended by an army of drones, equipped with weapons to eliminate pests, but armed with the tools to kill much larger prey.

When we are first introduced to John and Claudia they’re on their way to a job and after a tense greeting with the man’s daughter, they are lead to their dying client. After a fraught conversation and over the reservations of his daughter, he allows a mask to be placed over his mouth as he inhales its lethal gas. Despite the film’s title, Hover doesn’t place a great deal of focus on the drone phenomenon until around its last 20 minutes. Instead for much of its running time, it plays more like a somber, understated drama about the emotional turmoil suffered by a group whose sole purpose is to kill people, albeit those who are suffering and opted to use their service.

Coleman does an admirable job with the film’s lead, delivering a tortured performance, losing herself in a character that must endure the complex rush of emotions her work entails after discovering she’s become pregnant with a married man’s baby, a plot point that is used to ratchet up the character’s feeling of hopelessness but is otherwise a largely missed opportunity to explore her character further. Grant does a fine job as well with John, who isn’t given a lot of motivation or backstory, but nonetheless has strong chemistry with Claudia and acts as a sort of father figure and mentor. Joanna, played by Beth Grant (no relation), who viewers may know as Kitty “He asked me to forcibly insert the lifeline exercise card into my anus!” Farmer from Donnie Darko, turns in a notable minor performance as an anti-drone rebel with a shotgun at her hip.

It’s an interesting drama that touches upon some challenging moral quandaries but loses some of its clout in its climax which brings things to a rather predictable conclusion through a series of lethargic action shots against a small army of identical, impersonal drones. The bad guys are needlessly evil and first impressions rarely deceive here, which ends up feeling somewhat hamfisted and preachy. There are elements that work and Hover gets off to a strong start, but there is an identity crisis here as if the film reflected upon itself and realized it had become a somber, personal drama and that it hadn’t quite filmed enough action shots to satisfy the quota.